14 Points

The trouble is that intervening to prevent genocide requires military force, and in recent years, the UN Security Council has been unwilling to sanction military interventions except of the most limited kind. As a result, the White House has been playing the role of world policeman and the power of the United States has filled the void.

On December 11, in a speech in Independence, Missouri, Kofi Annan lambasted the United States for involving itself in conflicts in which he believes it had no business, saying “when power, especially military force, is used, the world will consider it legitimate only when convinced that it is being used for the right purpose — for broadly shared aims — in accordance with broadly accepted norms.”

But what are these broadly accepted norms? When Milosevic was busy murdering Albanians and piling them into mass graves in Kosovo, NATO stepped in without the UN’s help. (Even that took some doing: Greece abstained to allow the mission to go ahead). In Afghanistan, with a nod to international cover with its “coalition of the willing”, the UN took out the Taliban with overwhelming firepower, with no UN involvement, claiming the right to self-defense. In Iraq, after having tried and failed to get a second UN Security Council resolution, the US gave up all pretence of civility and simply went in without any UN cover whatsoever.

While the jury may still be out on Kosovo and Afghanistan, the consequences of military intervention in Iraq have of course been disastrous. If taking out Saddam had nothing to do with protecting innocent Shiites or law-abiding American citizens against the horrors of WMD, but was rather about a selfish grab for oil or for an alternative ally in the region (and some might argue, even then) - then the UN Security Council was right to resist and Annan has the moral imperative to castigate the US.

But broader complaint seems misplaced. In two of these three cases, arguably the US had legitimate reasons for military intervention. Kosovo prevented genocide and removed a malignant dictator threatening European security. Afghanistan was proportionate exercise of the right to use force in self-defense. These would seem to be the broadly accepted norms to which Mr Annan was referring. But the UN Security Council balked at sanctioning force.

There is, of course, an even bigger elephant in the room. (An elephant so large that starry-eyed Princeton students weren’t prepared to tackle it when Mr Annan gave his speech, confining their questions to profound issues like whether they should work on non-proliferation or disarmament after leaving college, after Mr Annan had spent nearly an hour patiently explaining why both needed to be tackled in tandem.)

That elephant is of course Darfur. Even if one considers Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo as illegitimate overstretch by the evil American hegemon, surely Darfur is the perfect candidate for a just, legal military intervention? Surely coming to the aid of innocent civilians being crushed by a brutal government-backed militia invokes the finest traditions of “responsibility to protect?”

But Annan seems to have simply given up: perhaps 31 years of depressing wars have finally gotten to him. Sure, he acknowledged that “Governments have a responsibility to protect their citizens. Where that government fails, either because it is unwilling, unable or indeed the perpetrator, the international community through the Security Council has an obligation to act”. But then he simply shook his head and allowed real-politik to win the day, saying the time is not ripe for military force. “The situation in Darfur is very difficult…we have been trying to get a UN force in with the consent of the Sudanese Government. We will not go in without their consent and in fact, speaking honestly, if I did not have the consent of the Sudanese I don’t see any government who will offer me troops to go in”, he said.

So the trouble is not simply that the United States has been overstepping its authority - although that is of course true - but that the UN Security Council as a collective body is desperately unwilling (and therefore incapable) of protecting anyone. This is a tragedy for all of us, but right now most of all for innocent residents of Darfur.

Annan was head of the UN Secretariat’s Department of Peace-Keeping Operations during the Rwandan genocide. Witnessing the unimaginable suffering in the murder of nearly a million Tutsis was enough to convince him that doing nothing was not an option, next time: this is part of the reason why he commissioned “Responsibility to Protect”.

But what is the alternative, now that next time is this time? Should we simply stand back and blithely watch while oppressive governments torture and massacre civilians, waiting for the world to decide whether use of force to prevent genocide is for “the right purpose”?

In case of Darfur, the international community’s answer to this question, tragically, appears to be yes. Fingers burnt by the Iraq debacle, everyone - the US included - is and waiting for the world to decide whether or not this intervention is legitimate. But those who get to make the decision don’t really care about Darfur. China is far too busy protecting its commercial relationships with Sudan to want to intervene- not to mention avoiding the unfortunate precedent that this would set for states who suppress their own democratic dissidents on home soil.

So Annan’s blunt criticism is partly missing its mark. He is absolutely right to insist that the United States has the responsibility to respect human rights. The high standards which we expect the US to uphold make violations in the war on terror seem particularly egregious. But we need to get this in perspective. The United States is not the world’s worst human rights abuser. While Iraq was a terrible mistake, the US is not always wrong: some of its military interventions have actually been a force for good. Compared with the horrific inactivity of Darfur and Rwanda, the US’s use of force in Afghanistan and Kosovo seems rather enlightened.

What is needed is a robust intervention force for the United Nations, and a robust mechanism for deploying it. This means the United Nations Security Council must actually be prepared to sanction the use of military force when it is really needed; then the United States might be less willing to flout it in the future. Only when the UN is prepared to do so will Annan’s criticism be properly targeted.

Right now, the UN Security Council is neither capable of taking such decisions or of deploying such a force. If we really do believe in the “responsibility to protect”, then this may mean giving the United States and its allies the freedom to act in the absence of the broadest level of support that Annan envisioned. Without this, the people of Darfur may simply wait forever, or for destruction - whichever comes first.

Victoria Whitford Managing Editor